James: Change can work for parents

Current trends in family studies are focused on what makes the healthiest families and what provides the healthiest environment for growing happy, healthy, and confident kids. We all need a reminder to look at ourselves and what we are doing.

We can learn from these reminders.

Some things we learn from all this family-focused research are: First, that home and family are vitally important. Yes, we learn good things in kindergarten that will help us throughout our lives, but family comes first, and family is there long after kindergarten. Second, we learn that involved, engaged parents who provide supervision for a child’s activities are also providing the love and sense of safety and security kids need to make good behavioral choices.

Third, parents who are willing to be the parent and not the friend are willing to make changes in activities and routines that are in the best interest of kids as they grow and change, even at the cost of experiencing a child’s displeasure. The choices and changes these parents make keep kids safe.

A recent study led by Dimitri Christakis, Director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at Seattle Children’s Research Institute, is a perfect example of what happens when parents are responsive to a child’s needs and are willing to change within the family unit.

This study observed changes in child behavior based on the types of TV programming kids watched. The results of the study showed kids who watched carefully-selected and monitored programs that promoted pro-social behavior had a greater decrease in aggressive behavior than kids who watched random and violent programs. It turns out what kids watch and whether or not parents are watching with them has more impact on behavior choices than the length of time kids watch TV.

So what do we learn from this study? We learn that kids copy what they see and hear. They absorb everything — good or bad. Parents can control to a great extent what kids see and hear by selecting the material the kids watch.

Bruce Feiler, author of “The Secrets of Happy Families: Improve Your Mornings, Rethink Family Dinner, Fight Smarter, Go Out and Play and Much More,” puts into understandable language many helpful ideas parents can use to set the tone for kids to make positive pro-social behavior choices.

Here are a few of his ideas as presented in a recent Parade Magazine article — “One Big Happy Family.”

■ Make sure your kids know as much about their family history as possible. Kids who have this kind of knowledge have a stronger sense of connectedness to something bigger than themselves. Therefore, we see kids with more confidence and a stronger sense of security.

■ Read to, talk to and play games with your kids. Their vocabulary will grow and their confidence and ability to connect with others through conversation will increase. Sit down to a family meal at least once a week and have conversation. Poor behavior choices will diminish.

■ Involve kids in decision-making that will impact them — like allowance, consequences, family vacations, etc. This engagement breeds a sense of responsibility.

■ Use “family meetings” at least once a week to bring the family together about issues that work or that need to be changed. Research shows that what kids want most for their parents is for parents to be less stressed. Holding family meetings is one way to accomplish this.

■ Better relationships result from celebrating accomplishments than from reviewing what didn’t go well.

■ Involved fathers have closer relationships with their kids, both male and female. Kids tend to be more confident and sociable. Girls tend to delay having sex longer than girls with less involved fathers. Boys tend to engage less in delinquent behavior.

■ The main thing happy families do is keep trying to be better. They never give up. So rather than continuing to do what is not working, choose to change. The kids will see you trying and be more likely to try.

Kids for decades have chanted at one another, “Copy Cat!” This speaks to the core of how kids learn. They imitate. What goes in will come out. Who are they most likely to imitate? Parents.

For parents who are looking for new ideas to guide their kids, the Internet is an endless resource. For a plethora of information about what is available in our area, go to www.peabpanhandle.org. This is a fairly new website that is striving to centralize access to links, current local information and events — parenting classes, the local Child Abuse Prevention Conference and Parenting Webinar at Amarillo College.

If there is to be change in the world, there must be change in kids. If there is to be change in kids, there must be change in parents.

Choose to change. Imagine the impact.

Amarillo resident Janice James, a Universal Child Abuse Prevention Specialist and Family Partner, works for Texas Panhandle Centers Services to At-Risk Youth (STAR) Program and serves on committees for the Parent Education Advisory Board at Amarillo College, the Child Abuse Prevention Conference, the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Coalition and the Impact Futures! Group.

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Kids growing up have some unanswered questions. They are confounded when they can't get an answer. Questions like:

Who is my father?

Where is my father?

What is a father?

Contraception has kept a lot of good men from becoming fathers. Failed contraception has caused a lot of men to become poor fathers. Thankfully we have our Father in Heaven. I'm afraid the gate to Heaven may be more narrow than we think and we may really have to humble ourselves to crawl through it.